Grant Jedlinsky | The Roanoke Times

Grandma dumped great gobs of sodden rice in the sink's garbage disposal. This one small, innocent act occurred in the snug, crowded kitchen at a home near Sugar Loaf Mountain.

And that was that. Grandma had clogged up the post-holiday feast's scrub and rinse.

Repairman Clinton Yandle was on call. His cellphone buzzed. It was a typical Thanksgiving in the plumbing trade: bustling. The emergency summons surprised him not one bit. Plumbers and drain rooters can be busier than carving knives on Thanksgiving Day (and Christmas, too).

"Some Thanksgivings I get so many calls I have trouble getting to them fast enough," said Yandle. "Other years it's hit or miss."

Think about it, he said.

On mega holidays, families stuff homes and then themselves. Kindly guests clear tables, scrape food scraps and tackle mounds of dishes in unfamiliar kitchens. Grease gets poured into P-traps, lingers there and congeals.

And, of course, much reading occurs in bathrooms (to put it delicately). Few things torpedo a holiday feast faster than an erupting toilet.

Granny, bless her, was trying simply to pitch in with the cleanup. But she had never owned a garbage disposal. The sink backed up. Dirty pots, pans, plates, ladles and gravy boats stacked high in icky piles.

Enter Yandle, owner of Turdbusters, a small company in Roanoke that frees up clogged drains, sinks and toilets. (Yes, that is the company name.) The family greeted Yandle warmly.

"They were all kind of hovering around in the kitchen, watching me work," he recalled. "It kind of felt good driving out there and helping people out on Thanksgiving."

Yandle said he charges the same amount for this kind of holiday house call as he does on an average day. "About $150," he said.

Like Yandle, Mike Clark, owner of a Roanoke Roto-Rooter franchise, said his company stays busy during the holidays.

"People try to use their sink as a trash can," Clark said. And homeowners frequently engage, he said, in garbage disposal abuse.

Clark's list of abusive food practices is long. Disposals don't take kindly to big wads of potato peelings, stringy vegetables like celery, eggshells, slick scraps like onion and tomato peelings and a bunch of other stuff, including, as Grandma learned, rice.

He said homeowners can sometimes unclog the disposal itself with the handy hex wrench usually supplied. But the offending food plug might be in the small drain tube connecting the disposal to the sink's drain line, he said.

"Once stuff gets past the disposal, it generally stops up the drain," he said.

Roto-Rooter does charge a bit more than usual for holiday visits, he said. "Generally it's about $165 to $185, depending on the job."

Yandle said he gets called out on all major holidays that involve indoor feasting.

"July Fourth is different. Everybody cooks out on July Fourth."